Election 2008: A New Administration, the LGBT Vote, & Proposition 8

Yesterday (Thursday) evening Andy and I motored into Los Angeles to attend a panel discussion organized by the Williams Institute ("advancing critical thought in the field of sexual orientation law and public policy") and co-sponsored by the Center for American Progress at the UCLA School of Law. The discussion was titled "Election 2008: A New Administration, the LGBT Vote, & Proposition 8." There were nine speakers, broken into two panels.

The first panel was moderated by Patrick Guerriero who you may recall as the young, gay Republican from Melrose, Massachusetts, who garnered so much attention when he was elected to the Massachusetts House in 1993 and then elected Mayor of Melrose in 1998. Here's his bio on the Log Cabin Republican site. The title says he's the President, the text says he has been Executive Director since 2003. I think the latter is correct. But more relevant to the moment, Mr. Guerriero took over as the director of the No On 8 campaign in October 2008.

The first speaker was Jill Darling who is the Deputy Director of the Los Angeles Times Poll. She ran down a list of exit poll results showing how the vote on Prop 8 went compared to the vote in 2000 on Prop 22. Support for equal rights grew in every single category of voter except for white Republican conservatives. She didn't report any poll results based on either religion or gay identity.

Following her was Kenneth Sherrill who rather confusingly ran very quickly through exit poll results for 165 voters who identified themselves lesbian, gay or bisexual. He said right off that 165 is too small a number to be valid. In fact, it's way too small, so why even try to divide it down even further as he did. There are no meaningful results to be found. Nonetheless, he plowed ahead, leaving me in a daze of knowing nothing.

Then Guerriero called on Ron Buckmire who was the only black person to speak. Mr. Buckmire is chairperson of the mathematics department of Occidental College. He is the creator of the Queer Resources Directory. Also, he's President of the Jordan/Rustin Coalition which is an organization "to empower Black same-gender loving, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals and families in Greater Los Angeles, to promote equal marriage rights and to advocate for fair treatment of everyone without regard to race, sexual orientation and gender identity or expression." He was interviewed on KCRW's Which Way L.A. on October 30. Here is Mr. Buckmire's blog, The Mad Professah Lectures.

Mr. Guerriero asked Mr. Buckmire specifically to address black and latino issues in the recent election. I wondered if Mr. Guerriero thought this was The Daily Show and Mr. Buckmire the "lead senior black reporter." Fortunately, Mr. Buckmire has a great sense of humor and joked that, yes, it was all true, that it was black people and black people only who had turned out and voted to take away the right to marry. When he finally pointed out that the last time he checked there were a lot more white conservatives than black people, the room erupted in applause with loud cheering from a posse of people of color who had crammed themselves all together in one corner at the back of the room. One of his main points was that we had to find out how Obama won such a large margin in California, and Prop 4 (the parental notification proposal) lost so badly, and yet Prop 8. He said there appeared to 1.3 million people who voted the right way on Obama and Prop 4, but then went on to vote to take marriage rights away from gay people.

The final speaker on the first panel was Geoff Kors, Executive Director of Equality California and a member of the No On 8 executive committee. He talked about internal polls that had shown that Prop 8 was leading. In response to an angry shout from an audience member ("Why didn't you tell us about that?"), Mr. Kors said that every time he tried to use those pessimistic internal poll numbers to raise to some support among the LGB community he was accused of doctoring the results. He suggested there had been overconfidence among those who supported equal rights. He also talked about an advertising and education campaign that Equality California had conducted over a period of time in Santa Barbara County. In 2000, Santa Barbara County had voted FOR Prop 22, the anti-gay marriage proposal, while neighboring Monterey County had voted against it. This time Santa Barbara County voted against Prop 8, while support for equal rights remained steady in Monterey County, which also voted against Prop 8. The conclusion is that more education is needed, that we can't assume educated, tolerant, even progressive people will support gay marriage with further education. Take Barack Obama as a prime example.

Mr. Kors said they had also learned that once people had decided in favor of equal marriage rights, they never went back, so that all the votes on our side now can be counted on next time as well.

The second panel was moderated by Brad Sears, executive director of the sponsoring Williams Institute. He called on Tobias Barrington Wolff, Chief Advisor to Presidential Candidate Barack Obama on LGBT issues. Here's a FAQ about Obama on LGBT issues written by Mr. Wolff. He spoke about Obama, saying that except for the marriage issue, he was completely supportive of equal rights for gay people. I find it difficult to believe that a Harvard Law grad fails to grasp the distinction between civil and religious marriage, so despite what Mr. Wolff says I still think Obama DOES privately support equal marriage rights, but is afraid of losing political support if he comes out in favor of gay marriage.

Mr. Wolff was the man photographed crying during the roll call vote at the Democratic National Convention as seen in this N.Y. Daily News blog.

Photo by dnblog1

Next we heard from Winnie Stachelberg, Senior Vice-President for External Affairs at Center for American Progress, one of the groups sponsoring the night's event. I'm sure she offered us some optimistic words, as she went on for quite awhile, but I'm drawing a total blank on what she said.

The final speaker was the thrilling Patrick Sammon, President of the Log Cabin Republicans, although he says he'll be stepping down from that position at the end of January.

Patrick Sammon.

He encouraged people to hold Obama's feet to the fire to make sure he sticks to his campaign pledges.

After the meeting adjourned, we all gathered in the corridor outside the lecture hall where most of the speakers stayed around to talk — and there was a very nice light buffet!

This was my first visit to the campus of UCLA, where Andy had been a student. We had gotten there a little early so we could take a short walking tour and grab a bite to eat in the Union. In the law school I photographed a few interesting items:

Desperate to find the restroom? Too bad for you.

If you would like a map showing you where to find Room 1437, please proceed to room 1499. If you would prefer a simple arrow directing you right or left, a selection of arrows is available in Room 1309.

Never before have I noticed a men's room sign with an attache case included.

Back when I was in college, if we didn't want a table to be moved we'd just attach a note to it saying "Don't move this table." At the UCLA law school it takes the Office Dean for Students five paragraphs to say the same thing:

This is the table which is not to be moved under pain of legal consequences. The lovely photographs on the wall have no similar instructions, so I assume anyone is free to unbolt them from the walls and carry them home.